[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Rehearsal, Season 2 Episode 4, “Kissme.”]
If Larry David is comedy’s social murderer, utilizing his humor to dissect and dismantle the unstated guidelines of society, Nathan Fielder is comedy’s most invested social anthropologist. The comic has constructed a profession on reveling in uncomfortable conditions, pushing cringeworthy interactions so far as they’ll go, and letting the air of awkwardness cling for so long as potential, all within the identify of unveiling some type of reality about our nature as modern Earth-dwellers. Oh, and for laughs — that too.
That is particularly the case in The Rehearsal, a present that (he insists) remains to be a comedy. Season 1 of the HBO sequence received deep into the weeds of emotion, conduct, clashing personalities, and better concepts of morality, and up to now, Season 2 has solely continued to widen the scope. The most recent providing of The Rehearsal, Season 2 Episode 4, finds Fielder returning to 1 specific subject that has seemingly each and confounded him for the majority of his profession: love and relationships.
Fittingly titled “Kissme,” the brand new episode of The Rehearsal follows Fielder taking the following steps in his try to grasp the psyche of airline pilots. After a rousing efficiency of “Wonderful Grace” by the remaining contestants of “Wings of Voice,” Fielder turns into notably preoccupied with the struggles of 1 particular first officer, Colin.
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After we first meet him, Colin reads as a typically well-meaning, although fairly introverted, younger man who confides in Fielder a few lack of success with reference to his relationship life. To instill extra self-confidence in Colin, Fielder introduces a brand new technique of rehearsing referred to as “The Pack.” Impressed by a nature documentary that coated sure animals’ tendency to hunt in packs, Fielder hires a bunch of actors to hover round Colin on a staged date, mimicking his each phrase and motion.
“Animals will hunt in packs ’trigger it offers every particular person animal the arrogance to do issues they’d usually be afraid to do on their very own,” Fielder defined. “I questioned if that concept utilized to people would make social interplay really feel much less scary.”
After all, being a Fielder manufacturing, the idea doesn’t cease there. Fielder then kicks it up a notch by frivolously encouraging among the actresses to contemplate Colin as a possible romantic match outdoors of the simulation. A couple of admit to discovering him cute — be it due to the way in which he carries himself or as a result of he has a horny Einstein-ness about him — and begin to flirt with him on set. One in every of them, Emma, finally even secures a real-world date.
It’s as soon as Colin and Emma embark on their first few hangouts that the true crux of the episode turns into clear. Bluntly, Colin is afraid to make a transfer. At the same time as Emma flashes her eyes and shares with Fielder that she’s been ready for a smooch, Colin can’t convey himself to lean in for the primary kiss.
This battle is juxtaposed with 5 simulated {couples} who’re every pretending to be Colin and Emma. In typical The Rehearsal vogue, these actors study all the pieces they’ll about their respective mark after which reside on a set that’s constructed to be a precise replication of Colin’s condo. On the similar time that Colin and Emma are struggling to gentle that first spark, lots of the pretend {couples} are already getting scorching and heavy.
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The Rehearsal, photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
The entire scenario deeply confuses Fielder. He clearly empathizes with Colin’s social anxiousness, however can’t work out a solution to break down his partitions. Equally, he stands in absolute amazement as he watches among the “pretend Emma” actresses get extraordinarily bodily with their scene associate whereas their precise vital others watch from just some ft away. “You’re cool with all this?” he asks one of many actress’ companions whereas she makes out with a “pretend Colin.”
As he stands there taking the entire madness in, laptop computer strapped to his shoulders as all the time, there’s an actual sense that Fielder is deeply invested within the delicate, illogical, unpredictable dance of human relationships. I imply, in a nutshell, that’s the entire level of The Rehearsal, in any case.
Returning to Fielder’s previous work reveals that he’s been tackling romantic and familial love onscreen because the earliest days of Nathan for You. A recurring bit on the beloved Comedy Central sequence is Fielder attempting to remodel skilled relationships into private ones. Severely, rewatch a season or two, and also you’ll be shocked at what number of segments finish in him asking the enterprise proprietor of the week on a date or to hang around.
Don’t get me incorrect, it’s hilarious and has led to basic moments like “the wizard of loneliness,” however its consistency is outstanding. Each straight and not directly, the subject of 1’s relationship standing has been Fielder’s secret weapon to make issues each extremely awkward and surprisingly real, from that poor man in “Maid Service” to the manufactured love triangle in “Dumb Starbucks” to the opposite co-pilots featured at first of “Kissme.”
Nathan for You additionally has a number of episodes devoted to Fielder comedically understanding his personal relationship-related insecurities. There’s the pretend relationship present he creates for himself as a way of immersion remedy (“Haunted Home / The Hunk”), the time he went on dates actually sporting one other man’s pores and skin (“The Hero”), the time he secretly measured somebody’s dopamine ranges to verify scientifically that he was enjoyable (“Nail Salon / Enjoyable”), and the notorious occasion of him asking an actress repeat “I really like you” time and again (“People who smoke Allowed”). The sequence even concluded with a full-length documentary concerning the seek for a long-lost love, Discovering Francis, wherein he forges a relationship with an escort that, in typical Fielder vogue, finally ends up blurring the road between leisure and actuality.
His post-Nathan for You initiatives have been equally targeted on romance. The Curse, the scripted dramedy that he references in “Kissme,” is basically involved with the interworking of his character’s less-than-healthy marriage, and the primary season of The Rehearsal confronted Fielder’s obsession with emotional connection head-on, culminating in a genuinely intense speech given by an actress portraying Angela. Even earlier this season, we’ve seen Fielder leverage a fractured relationship with the “friendship flowers” incident in Episode 1 and interview a dude who’s “been banned from just about each relationship app identified to man” in Episode 2.
“Kissme” merely serves as his newest journey to the nicely of affection’s mysteries. Like in life, nevertheless, it appears as if the expertise solely served to introduce extra questions than solutions, particularly provided that Colin’s decision is a lone, easy kiss on the cheek.
Fielder’s initiatives usually really feel like an extension of himself, not in the least as a result of he nearly all the time performs a heightened model of himself relatively than a conventional character. In that manner, it’s tempting to view his profession as an try to each work out and exploit human nature, notably in the case of how we work together with one another. If that’s the case, Fielder sadly appears a great distance off from cracking the code of affection. It’s a hell of an satisfying time to observe him strive, although.
New episodes of The Rehearsal premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.